On Virtual Characters that Can See

A virtual character (VC) acts within its virtual world boundaries, but with vision sensory capabilities, it may be expected to explore the real world and interact with the intelligent beings there. Such a VC can be equipped with algorithms to localize humans, recognize and communicate with them. These perceptual capabilities prompt a sophisticated cognitive architecture (CA), enabling our VC to learn from intelligent beings and perhaps reason like one. This CA needs to be fairly seamless, reliable and adaptive. Here we explore a vision-based human-centric approach to the VC design.